YEREVAN — With an identical score of 2:0, Armenia lost both games against North Macedonia, first on September 10 in Skopje, and then Sunday, October 13, in Yerevan. These were part of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Nations League games. After the first defeat, Armenia’s coach Oleksander Petrakov promised the squad was getting ready for revenge, which, however, never happened.
In the first half of the game in Yerevan, the Armenian team was more active, but the teams went to the break with no goals recorded. In the 72nd minute, Bojan Miovski made a left-footed shot from the right side of the box to the top left corner. The goal was assisted by Isnik Alimi, who also doubled the score about 10 minutes later. The referee added six extra minutes to the main time, and Armenia’s Eduard Spertsyan got a chance to score in the last minute of the additional time – but he was unsuccessful.
The history of the games between these two nations is impressive: the Armenians defeated the former Yugoslavian country with significant scores of 4:1 in 2011 and 4:0 in 2018. However, compared to the improvement in the Eastern European teams’ games, the Armenian squad has been performing less impressive games lately, with perhaps the one exception of its win against Latvia last month. A week ago, Armenia also narrowly escaped another defeat against the Faroe Islands (2:2), a European self-governing territory with a population of 50,000 people.
The Football Federation reported that following the game against North Macedonia, Coach Petrakov has been sacked. On November 14, Armenians will host the Faroe Islands team in Yerevan. In the last game of the UEFA Nations League, Armenia will play in Latvia after that.
The video which follows features snapshots of the game.
